A logo is the face of a brand. It’s the most powerful visual asset that the fans and followers remember the companies with. Naturally, if you want to take your business to the next level, then you need to start building a brand through a unique and attractive logo. And what’s a better way to get it done than creating it yourself.

Guide to Designing the Perfect Logo

To create the perfect logo for your company, just follow these steps:

1. Set Clear Goals

Before you get started, you need to get your priorities right. In other words, you must ask yourself- “Why do I need a logo?”. You should have a clear answer to this question as that will create the foundation of your goals, and unless you have a clear and ambitious goal, you can’t create the perfect logo.

2. Identify the Attributes that Make You Special

To establish yourself as a brand in the industry, you need to identify the qualities and features that help you stand out from the rest.  By incorporating these elements into the design, you can make your logo special and unique, and also show the world what you are all about.

The following are some of the questions that you can ask yourself to establish your brand identity:

• What makes our products/services better than others in the market?
• Why do our customers love us?
• What kind of brand voice do we have?
• What are the three words that can sum up our brand?

3. Check Out Other Designs

Without prior experience with graphic design, and maybe even when you do, you need the inspiration to get started. Otherwise, starting from scratch can make your job more challenging than it should be.

There is no dearth of websites where you can find vintage and modern logo designs to get your creative juices flowing. For instance, the following are some of the best resources that you can consider:

• Brand New:A product of Under Consideration that provides constructive feedback for corporate branding jobs, Brand New offers updates on the latest logo design trends and premium designs that you can draw inspiration from.
• LogoLounge: LogoLounge can be your go-to website for checking out some of the most attractive logos on the Internet. It has over whopping 175,000 logos to give you insights about designing a perfect logo. You also get tons of information on discussion, research, and inspiration about trending design techniques.
• Logo Pond:LogoPond showcases top logos created by skilled artists from around the world. You can find thousands of creative designs here and you can even upload your own works for others to see.

Study Your Rivals
There are many advantages of knowing your competition. For instance, you can learn about the things that make your rivals so popular and successful. You can also check out their logos in detail to get ideas and to also avoid creating designs that look similar to theirs.

5. Pick Your Style

A company logo can have any of the styles discussed below:

Monogram Logo

Monogram logos or lettermark logos are logos that are based on the initials of brands. Two good examples of this category are HP and HBO which stand for Hewlett Packard and Home Box Office, respectively. Although many people know the full form of the abbreviations, most people recognize the brands by their initials i.e. the logos. The reason is simple- the initials here are easier to remember than the full names.

Brandmark Logo

Brandmark logos are incredibly popular. As the name suggests, these are based on “brand mark” or “pictorial mark” with some of the examples for your consideration including Apple, Pepsi, Target, etc.

If you are picking brandmark for your logo design, then you need to be extremely careful about the imagery. If it’s not unique and attractive enough, then the logo can defeat its purpose rather easily.

Wordmark Logo

Wordmark logos are logos that mostly comprise words. Good examples include Google, Sony, FedEx, etc. Since these logos are mainly focused on the lettering, you must choose the typography and fonts carefully. Of course, you can study some examples of the best modern fontsthat you can use for your logo if you decide to go with it.

6. Use the Right Colours

You may have your favorite colors; most people do. However, when it comes to professional graphic design, then you have to choose the colors carefully. This is because each color represents certain kinds of emotions and attributes. For instance, if you pick red as the primary color for your logo, then you will tell the people that your brand is all about “enthusiasm, passion, and energy”. In the same way, if you will pick black as the primary color for your logo, then you will say that your brand is all about “authority, boldness, and elegance”.

Skilled graphic designers worth their salt understand the psychology of colors in company logos. In fact, the same is an important subject that every professional must have a good idea about to create the best designs. Since you aren’t a professional yourself, it’s best to at least study the concept in detail before you get started.

Better Options?

If at this point you are wondering that logo design is a difficult task, then you aren’t the only one. Creating a one-of-a-kind logo that also encapsulates your brand’s personality and identity takes time and energy, and although there are easier ways to create a logowhich comprise online logo makers, it’s a good idea to try designing the logo yourself first. This is because it will teach you the basics of graphic design and make it easier to create the perfect logo even when you use an online program or take help from a freelancer logo designer.

The post How to Create Your Own Logo – Step by Step Guide appeared first on Bloggermint.

1. Identifying your target audience:

Identifying and understanding your target customers is always important for any business. It means that you should know their likes and dislikes, their expectations in any product as a consumer and their day-to-day problems for which they seek solutions. You should also know what type of services and products are used by customers and which of them makes them really happy and satisfied. Your content should be focused on satisfying and engaging your customers and help your business drive towards growth. You should know where your target audience generally hang out online and the type of content they prefer. For instance, some users prefer to read short articles or articles containing rich media while some may prefer longer blog-type articles.

Every group of audience will have a unique taste and prefer to read specific content types. If you are able to figure out the content forms which are preferred by your target audience, then you will be able to create unique content to satisfy them which will create a positive impact for your business. The amount of information you gather about your target users will determine your success in content marketing. Only when you understand your customers thoroughly and know what kind of products and services make them happy, you will be able to provide them with valuable content which pleases them.

2. Have a proper marketing plan:

Before you start developing content, you should have a clear marketing plan based on your business goals and discuss the plan with your content production team. You should be aware of the business goals for your content marketing program and the unique values you wish to offer through your content along with details of your business model. You can also mention the resources you will require to execute your marketing plan and the risks or challenges you expect during your content marketing campaign. In many cases, content marketing projects start in silos and the team does not make use of the available resources to maximum potential. You should always encourage collaboration between various teams and ensure that they work together in synergy to produce valuable content that will make your customers happy. You should also bring in the key stakeholders and plan all your campaign activities ahead in order to achieve good results.

3. Always prefer Quality over Quantity:

It doesn’t matter how many articles you write for your campaign or how many websites you create to promote your business. It does not matter how much content you create but only matters what you communicate to your customers through your content. Always focus on quality of the articles you create and let quality determine the frequency and length of your content. There are different categories of content like website content, blog content, social media content, infographics etc. Social media is also helping businesses to market themselves through various forms like creating a YouTube channel, Facebook page or Twitter account. For instance, anyoption’s YouTube channel offers quality videos about binary options trading which can be very informative and helpful for newbie traders. Similarly you can also promote your business through quality content driven towards your target audience. Success in social media marketing is based on your ability to create and syndicate content that will attract target audience from other websites. You should have a proper system in place with streamlined process and an excellent team of writers to manage, edit and review all the content you create for your marketing campaign.

4. Proper distribution of Content through various channels:

An important step in content marketing is distributing the content you create through various channels. After your content is review thoroughly, you should distribute it through specific channels where you can expect maximum interest and engagement from your target audience. Social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus etc. have become the preferred channels for various businesses to promote themselves online. You should be able to create compelling and unique content to attract your target audience in social media. Anyoption’s twitter channel provides quality finance articles which are informative and engaging to their target audience who are mainly investors and financial experts.

5. Constantly review and improve your content based on performance:

In order to achieve continuous success in your marketing campaign, you should always produce relevant content to satisfy your customers by constantly reviewing and improving it based on the past performance. You should measure the success of content published through different channels and track your Key performance indicators on regular basis. If you find any specific category of content is getting better views through others, you should focus more on generating similar content and distribute it through various channels. You can make use of real-time analytics to get the visitor statistics for content published through various channels based on which you can evolve your content marketing strategy. If any particular pieces of content are not giving you good results, you should review them and focus on creating content that generates better results. This can help you with cost savings and running a successful content marketing campaign.

Content marketing has changed the way of how businesses promote them and engage with their customers. A successful content marketing strategy is based on good understanding of the target audience and creating valuable content to satisfy them consistently. By leveraging on various social media channels and blogs, you can take your business to new heights through successful content marketing campaigns.

The post 5 Ingredients to a Winning Content Marketing Strategy appeared first on Bloggermint.

Key areas where Wix SEO focuses on optimizing your site

Below is the list of the main features of Wix SEO:

• Page Meta Tags for helping your site get found on search engines.
• Descriptive and user-friendly URLs.
• Optimized Heading tags for every page.
• Keyword in content to ensure Google what your site is all about.
• Anchor links.
• Alt Text for getting your images indexed.
• Mobile Optimization of websites.
• 301 redirects between domains, platforms, and Wix.
• Google Analytics.
• Site verification.
• Faster page load time.

How Wix SEO helps in powerful site optimization?

Page Meta Tags

Page Meta Tags are the unseen information that helps your site get found in search engines. This includes, the page title, description, and keywords and the content people see while performing a Google search. With Wix SEO you can easily optimize your page meta tags by inserting a unique title and description for each page which is relevant to the page content. The Wix Editor recommends that you to write your page title under 60 characters, including your business name and location. The page description should be within 160 characters and contain relevant keywords and information about your business.

Heading tags

Wix lets you optimize your site headlines by adding their own unique heading tags as they are strongly observed by search engines. Since the heading tag is an indication to the reader about the content, it is made extremely easy to insert H1 to H6 tags in your content to help you optimize your website effectively and get found in search engines.

Keywords in Content

Adding relevant keywords in your site content helps it get found easily in search engines. And Wix makes it easier for you to customize your site content as you want. Add keywords in content those accurately describe your business. You can find the best keywords using relevant tools like Google Adwords or Moz’s Keyword Tool.

Anchor Links

Anchor links are the links that connect your pages to external as well as internal pages of your site. Wix offers you the convenience to interlink your site to other pages because it is one of the powerful ways to improve a site SEO. This delivers a go-ahead experience to your visitors by connecting your site to relevant pages. The link should indicate visitors where they are going to visit while they click.

Alt Text

Alt text is the description that gets your images indexed in search engines. More than the page content and keywords, Google also determines the search results with the site images. This is why the Alt text content is added to the images so that they are displayed in Google image search. The Alt text should be short and precise and include relevant information as the content.

Mobile Optimization

Wix perfectly optimizes your site with a mobile-friendly interface so that it can be accessed by your visitors from any place and any device. Nowadays, people are so much mobile phone oriented that they find it convenient to access websites from this specific device rather carrying the bulky laptops. This is why Wix emphasizes more on making your website responsive so that it looks great on any device and ranks at the top of Google’s mobile search results. Since Google believes that a mobile optimized web page delivers a great user experience to visitors, it focuses more on responsive web pages, and how well you optimize your website for mobile phones.

301 redirects

301 redirects are used to redirect your old links to the new pages on your Wix site. This feature is used to preserve the SEO ranking of your existing site links while creating a new site. To use 301 redirects, it is necessary to analyze your previous site links in terms of SEO so that similar content should be used when creating a new site. This investigation includes reviewing your previous site’s content, header tags, meta tags, and the site structure.

Conclusion

Using Wix SEO is not at all a rocket science, but website owners who are not necessarily technically savvy and find it discouraging to handle the technical side of their web pages, Wix takes the responsibility to manage their SEO. So you can completely rely on Wix and peacefully run your site letting the platform handle all the SEO components.

We’re not the only ones that think that Wix SEO is great, check this review of Wix SEO by speckygeek.com

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One advantage to using social media to promoting products is that it gives a personal appeal, and is easier to establish a relationship with existing and potential customers. Many companies and brands have Facebook pages and produce posts that aim to start a conversation about products. While driving people to a website through search engine optimization was the name of the game a decade ago, encouraging people on social media to like pages, comment and share content is the goal. The focus is on creating content that is shareable and will inspire people to want to show it to other people.

Making Content Shareable

To create a social media marketing strategy, it is essential to think about why people decide to share articles, videos and other posts. Since most people use social media nowadays, it is worthwhile considering what makes you want to share something. Perhaps you tried a fantastic recipe, have taken a picture of the results and want to share the video and the recipe on social media. Perhaps you read a news story about the advantage of eating a certain kind of diet or the dangers of having using certain chemicals for household cleaning. What makes content shareable is if it affects people personally and is something that is of interest to a wide audience.

Written Content on Social Media

While content producers are still writing with an aim to reach the top of the search engines with the help of keywords, this is not the kind of singular obsession it was a decade ago. It is important that content piques a reader’s interest and provides information or an insight that is unique. This has been a victory for those who favor quality written content, rather than the keyword stuffed web articles filled with irrelevant links to drive SEO. Google now penalizes a website for putting up content with misleading links or excessive amounts of keywords. Quality is making a comeback along with uniqueness in written content.

Video Is Vital

The relatively low cost of producing video and the fact that it arrests the attention and engages the viewer immediately are factors that have made video a major priority in social media marketing strategies. Companies like Hampton Creek have several kinds of videos that are shareable, including product reviews from social media influencers, videos expressing its brand philosophy and recipe demonstrations. Videos that are shared often on social media are quite short, usually under three minutes long.

Social Media Posts

Large and small companies have pages and accounts on social media and use the platform as a way to generate interest among existing and potential customers. Grabbing “likes” and shares on Facebook is an important goal in marketing, and some companies provide incentives for likes and shares, such as a drawing for a prize or a contest. News articles about the product are posted on a company’s Facebook page, or representatives of the business create Tweets about new products, commercials, and upcoming releases. Social media allows customers to discuss the product, ask questions and provide feedback. Getting people who have liked the page to share it is one essential way of creating more buzz around your brand.

Business Becomes More Sociable

It isn’t about just selling products anymore, but the key to marketing is to create relationships and to start a conversation about your product or brand. Linking your items with something trending on social media or in the press is a good way to get people talking about your product. The tone used on social media should be upbeat, positive and fresh without sparking excessive controversy or inviting negative comments. Once a post about your company has gone viral, people are likely to remember it and want to know more about your products. This is where your page or account can provide informational material and calls to action to generate sales.

Guest post by hamptoncreek

The post How Your Brand Can Win on Social Media appeared first on Bloggermint.

Why go with CustomWritings over the alternative?

1. They’re upfront about their pricing. A price calculator is provided to help you determine how much their service will cost. This feature prevents any surprise costs or fees from sneaking up on you. You’ll find some other sites aren’t nearly as clear about the cost of their work.
2. Essay samples are available. You can look yourself and verify the quality of their writing. There are a lot of examples so review the ones most relevant to your request.
3. If you’re unhappy with their work, you may be eligible for a partial refund. If you’d like to use the essay they’ve provided but feel the need to make substantial edits, just apply for a partial refund. Up to 40% may be refunded according to the independent dispute department’s discretion.
4. If you decide you would rather write the document yourself, you’re similarly able to request a refund. The dispute department has the discretion to refund the cost up to 100%. They’ll also offer a free revision, and you can request a different writer if you feel the need to do so.
5. Customer service is available all weekdays and Saturday until 1 pm (UCT). It’s rare to find excellent customer service and even more unusual for them to pick up the phone on a weekend.

It’s worth the cost to gain all of these additional benefits. Some sites provide no guarantee of a specific delivery timeframe. You might specify how long the job may take, but it could be days or weeks before someone selects the task and starts the clock! Other sites give you more control over the process but offer few if any guarantees in the event you’re unhappy with the essay. They may even charge an additional fee for a revision. CustomWritings won’t nickel and dime you, and it’s worth every penny you pay for the work.

Admittedly, even a perfect writing site can still be difficult to work with if things on the customer end aren’t apparent. Here are some ways you can make sure hiring a writer is successful.

1. Make sure the final deadline you give is truly the final one. Give plenty of time for each draft and revision. The timeline will populate automatically, but it’s still an excellent idea to review it for practicality.
   Have a clear description of what you want. Alternatively, be willing to clarify.
2. Respond promptly to the writer’s questions. Clarification may be needed even for well-written essay requests, and it may not be able to come directly from you. If you don’t know the answer, ask the person who requested the piece.
3. Request a revision if you’re not completely satisfied. Many things take relatively little time and effort to resolve. It’s better for both the writer and the site to revise and get a 10/10 rating than to leave you disappointed and receive 8/10 or less.
4. Reach out to customer service soonest if you have questions. Leaving a question unanswered early in the process may cause trouble down the line. The more the writer has written, the more difficult it is to make adjustments.

It’s important to know CustomWritings does a lot more than just essays. They do reports, case studies, and formatting work as well and much more. Their website provides a full list of all the services rendered, and it’s too many to list here. Essays tend to lean toward academia, but there are other things like lab reports, speeches, and presentations which apply to professionals as well.

Hiring CustomWritings for an essay is intuitive and straight-forward. They will do everything they can to deliver high-quality work to you on time. They want to do well, answer your questions and have you refer more work their way. Anything they can reasonably do to make you happy is worth their time and effort. Let them help you make your next writing task a huge success.

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1 – Consistency is King

Regularly posting unique articles or blog posts is incredibly beneficial to the SEO efforts of a website. Not only will search engine spiders see that a site is actively maintained, but consistently updated sites receive more visits from spiders as a whole.
Even if a website is designed to be a static informational domain, routinely updating code and editing and “fixing” the site’s content will have a similar effect.

2 – Content Matters

As search engines strive to bring users the best possible content for their search terms, websites that offer highly relevant content without a flood of keywords are tagged as valuable to viewers. The easiest way to use this notion to one’s advantage is to simply write the site’s copy in conversational language and let search engines make the relevant connections from there.

3 – High Authority Incoming Links

One of the more difficult elements of SEO to control, receiving inbound links from popular sites will yield a massive boost in internet rankings. This is especially true when a high authority niche site is contextually relevant to the site being linked to. That being the case, SEOs should be wary to not blindly attempt to receive links from high-authority pages as some are known to be spammy in nature and can actually hinder or hurt SEO development for a new site.
Take care when coming across promises like this one:

4 – Link to Relevant Sites

To some, it seems counterintuitive to lead site viewers to other domains, especially when the only other relevant sites out there are direct or indirect competition -direct re sales, indirect re viewers. Nevertheless, search engine algorithms have been designed to see these outbound links as proof that a site is referencing factual and reliable material.

5 – Optimize Load Times

People hate when a website takes too long to load and, in those cases, the back button on a browser will usually get clicked before the site is even fully displayed. This piece of human nature is pretty obvious, and search engine providers realize that as well. In response to that universal impatience, Google, Yahoo!, Bing and other search providers penalize slow-loading pages swiftly and harshly. Most site-building tools will help keep bloated code to a minimum and ensure faster loading.

6 – URL Control

URLs should be semantically setup so important keywords appear in the address. The keyword or phrase can appear in folders or the filename (i.e. .html, .php, .jpg, etc) but should not come across as spammy. Two examples of good URL control for a site looking to rank for the phrase “best basketball shoes”:
http://www.example.com/basketball-shoes/best-of-2014.htm
http://www.example.com/blog/best-basketball-shoes-this-season.php
Conversely, “spammy” URL control would look like this:
http://www.example.com/best-basketball-shoes/find-best-basketball-shoes.html
Good URL control also has the added benefit of being more memorable to users, which may lead to direct return visits to a specific page.

7 – Important Tag Elements

No matter what, website owners should take care to have certain tags on their sites as these small additions can have a large impact on both search- and click-ability. The most important of these (after HTML, HEAD, TITLE, BODY and so on) are the META tags for keywords and descriptions as well as the ALT=”” within IMG tags. The description offered in META tags is what appears on search engines underneath the page’s title. The ALT text on IMG tags helps rank on the heavily-used image lookup for the big search engines.

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Blogging has come a long way and become a full time profession for many while many blogs have become huge media houses. Blogs like TheVerge, Huffington Post and others. These blogs provide careers to many creative people who produce content for such blogs. There is no limitation to what you can share on a blog. With a page on the internet where you can share news, ideologies, stories and what not, one can potentially get their word out to the whole internet. But then, having a successful blogging career is not an easy task as managing a blog is a testing task to carry. Anyway, if someone wants to start a blog, they should know a few things beforehand to make sure they are well adjusted in the huge blogosphere that they are about to enter.

This is a post about 5 of the most important things you should know before you start your own blog.

#1 Decide a rough idea of the niche you want to work on

I have seen many people giving advise to new bloggers that they should know what they are going to blog about. This is a good advice but I personally feel that strictly sticking to just one niche will not only narrow down your chances of getting exposure, but it will also prevent you from exploring new horizons that you might feel more comfortable with.

What I am trying to say here is, you should have a rough idea of what you are going to blog about. Let’s say you are going to blog about technology but there are so many blogs that focus on all-things-tech. Making yourself stand out from the rest is important so explore the technology niche and look for a sub-niche that feels right to you and makes you unique.

#2 Make sure your blog design is good and appealing

Have you ever visited those confusing old government website and though to yourself, “what am I looking at?”. This is exactly what others feel when your blog does not have a good enough design. WordPress is a great option that you can choose to run your blog on. But if you are a non-tech savvy person, you might face some difficulties with WordPress. This is where the website builders like Wix.com come in. You can choose to start a blog with them and they provide you with a whole suite of things you need to build your website.

You can go as far as booking the domain with them and they will also take care of the hosting which is included in the packet. You will also get to choose your blog design from their premade templates base and I am sure you can find one that suits you well. They also help people who are hosting their websites with them with topics like how to make a website and how to promote your business which means they are not only good for new bloggers, but they also provide great support to existing businesses.

Wix also has a great Blog Editor which comes with plenty of amazing features. Features like being able to search videos across the internet and then being able to embed them are built right in. You can also choose from and embed those cheeky GIF images into your blog post right from their editor.

#3 Content is the King and always will be

Make sure whatever you post on your blog is written after a good research. No one likes to read a half baked post with wrong or inaccurate information. You should also make sure that your posts are precise and to the point as these posts are counted as good content. Use images wherever necessary to make sure that your content is interactive and you can explain so much with a simple use of an image. The formatting of the posts should also be good so that the user can read through the post easily. Linking to appropriate sources where the reader can find more information on a topic is also a great strategy to provide your readers with some extra knowledge that they may want to grab.

#4 If Content is the King, then SEO is the Queen

Content and SEO go together hand to hand. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it is the process of optimizing your posts in such a way that it becomes suitable for the search engine bots from Google or Bing etc. to crawl and index posts on your website.

Each post on your blog has three main things that a search engine bot has to crawl. Number of is the Title of the post which is the main headline or title that you assign to each and every post of yours. Then comes the meta description of the post. You might have seen a few sentences on search engine pages that tell you what the link is about. This is what meta description is. Lastly, Schema – it means all the extra data like star ratings, video thumbnails and details and many other things that a search engine bot can crawl on the page. You need to do a good job at SEO if you want your content ranked. If you have Wix in your mind to build your blog on, then you must know about their SEO Wizard feature that will help you optimize your blog post for search engines.

#5 Making a Blog successful takes time, have patience

I have seen so many people thinking that Blogging is just a quick way to earn money. Let me make it clear right away, you don’t make as much money from Blogging as those PRO people you look up to. They have other sources of income. But guess what, there are full fledged media houses running through just one famous blog. You need to work hard, market you blog in a suitable way and make sure you produce the content that people want to read in order to be successful at blogging.

So, these were the 5 most important and basic things that you need to know before you start Blogging. Blogging as a profession is really good and has a lot of scope, provided you have the guts to work hard and do your best.

The post 5 Things You Should Know Before Starting Your Own Blog appeared first on Bloggermint.

The World Wide Web has become more than a collection of numerous web pages. We now have smartphones and tablets that have apps on it and these apps also use the Internet to function. But even today, webpages and websites are what define the Internet. Creating a website used to be a tedious task. You needed to hire a developer if you weren’t familiar with web designing yourself, you need to make sure your website worked on all the major browsers and even after that, you needed to pay a hefty amount of money for all this.

Well, not anymore.

Services like Wix.com have made it really easy for anyone to build a website themselves without any problems or all the coding works. Wix.com is a platform that even a person who is getting started with the Internet can use to create their own website.

Their new website builder is amazing and lets you build websites with ease. Let us take a look at the features of Wix.com and what it has to offer.

Wix.com – Introduction

Wix.com is an online service that allows you to create several different types of websites with their very advanced website builder. You don’t have to code or even hire a developer. You get a website builder that is really easy to use and you could just go ahead and use the WYSIWYG builder to build your webpage one by one.

Wix.com eliminates the whole process of approaching web developers and then getting a quote and then negotiating with them in order to get a website developed. With Wix.com, all you need to do is sign up and get started.

How to sign-up and get started with Wix.com?

Getting started with Wix.com is really easy. All you need to do is follow the process mentioned below.

1. Open Wix.com & Sign up

Just head over to Wix.com and click the Sign in button. You will need to create an account if you don’t already have one. You can use your Google as well as Facebook account to instantly create an account or you can use your email to do so as well.

2. Choose the type of website you want
After signing up, you will be redirected to a page where you can choose the type of website you want to build. This list contains choices like blogs, portfolios, events websites and even online stores!

3. Choose the template

Just for demonstration purposes, I am going to create a CV website and before doing that, I need to choose a template from the available options. The number of available templates is impressive and they look really good.

You can filter out the templates with categories. All the templates are responsive by default so you have your mobile viewers covered.

4. Choose a template and customize it!

Now that you have chosen a template, you will be redirected to a new page where you will be able to choose the elements you want to edit. As you can see in the image below, you have the options to edit text, replace backgrounds etc.

5. Use the App Market for more features

The App Market feature in the Wix.com website builder is a really nifty addition that lets you add more features. It is a marketplace for extensions for your Wix.com from where you can get extensions like comments, form builders etc. for free or by paying.

6. Publish!
As soon as you click the Publish button, you will be asked to create a URL for the page you just created. You can either have a Wix.com subdomain or you can just buy a customized domain name.

When you choose a custom domain, you can either purchase one from Wix.com or you can just set up a domain you already own.

Verdict – Final word

As soon as the domain setup is complete, the website will be published and it will be viewable by public instantly. Wix.com manages the hosting so you can be assured of the uptime.

Wix.com really provides a really nice way of building a website and as you can see in the process above, you can setup a website by just choosing a template and editing it.

The post Build some solid websites without coding with Wix.com appeared first on Bloggermint.

Similarly, greater and greater numbers numbers of young, enthusiastic would-be employees are using the Internet to find job and interview opportunities.

Huge job listing networks like Indeed, CareerBuilder, and SimplyHired own most of the market share, but several private webmasters have also been cashing in. A few popular privately owned job boards include Problogger (which averages over $1000 in autopilot revenue per week), BloggingPro, WP Hired, and many others.

In fact, the size of the online job board market has been estimated to exceed $1.68 billion worldwide. That’s a whole lot of money, and you can get a chance to get a slice of the pie by building your own job board website with the WordPress Job Board Plugin.

How to Create a Job Board Website with WPJobBoard

The WP Job Board plugin is one of the most popular premium job board plugins for WordPress; it allows you to create a fully functional, well-styled job board that’s useful for both employers and job-seekers.

In this post, we’ll take an in-depth look at all the features this plugins has to offer.

Configuring the Plugin

The first thing to do after downloading and installing the plugin is to configure it for your site. After activation, you should be able to see two new items in your WordPress side menu.

The first menu item will be titled “Job Board” and will have the following tabs under it: Jobs, Applications, Employers, Candidates, Payments, Memberships, and E-mail Alerts.

The second will be titled “Settings (WPJB)” and will have these tabs under it: Configuration, Pricing, Custom Fields, Promotion, Categories, Job Types, E-mail Templates, and Import.

The one we’ll be concentrating on for now is the Settings (WPJB) page.

There are a whole lot of configurations and customizations possible, so I’ll just walk you through some of the most major ones.

Configuration:​ This is where you’ll be able to edit the basic things concerning your job board.

You can change the number of job offers per page, the number of days after publishing a job listing is marked as “new”, the number of days after which a job listing is marked as “old”, and whether or not a job listing should be hid from visitors after the position has been filled.

You can also choose to allow employers to edit their job listings. Online applications and job searches can be enabled or disabled, and you can also select who can post new jobs (users with employer accounts, users with administrator accounts, or anyone).

If you allow people other than administrators to submit job listings, then you can also choose to hold published job listings for moderation before they go live on your site.

Editing resume options is another possibility: you can hide contact info on resumes, limit visibility to specific user roles, hold resumes for moderation, and more.

Some SEO & link structure options have also been added in to help make your site more Google-friendly.

Besides all the above, several third-party integrations are possible: multiple social networks, Google APIs, reCaptcha, and a couple prominent job sites (Indeed and CareerBuilder) can all be integrated into your new job board.

You can also customize settings for the two payment methods by which you receive fees from employers who want to post jobs on your site: PayPal & Stripe are your two options.

Pricing: ​In this section, you can customize your pricing structure.

There are two main ways to make money. One, you can charge employers a set fee to post a new job or to access a resume. Two, you can create employer membership packages that allow members to access all resumes and post a limited number of job listings per month.

For either pricing scheme, you can specify the fee amount and currency in which the fee is to be received.

Custom fields: ​On this page, you can edit the various front end forms for job submissions, applications, searches, company registration, and resume submissions.

You can build each form out as you see fit. You can add required textareas like job title and description, create a dropdown so employers can choose the industry their job is in, append an area for company contact info, etc.. The possibilities are endless.

Promotions: ​This setting allows you to run discount promotions on your site. For instance, you could choose to run a 20% off discount for new premium job submissions for a 7-day period.

Categories: ​Here you add the different categories into which jobs can be classified (i.e. the sector or industry the job is in).

Job Types: ​You can create multiple job types to further classify your listing. A few ideas to get you started are freelance, full-time, part-time, or internship jobs.

E-mail Templates: ​Here you can choose to send several different kinds of notification emails whenever a new action has been performed on your website.

For instance, an email can be sent to the administrator when a new job has been posted, when a payment has been received, or when an employer is requesting verification.

You can also choose to send an automatic email to an employer when a new online application has been sent in, when their job listing has passed moderation, or when resume access has been granted to them.

Emails can also be sent to candidates when their application has been sent and if they are accepted.

In my opinion, this is one of the coolest features WP Job Board has to offer, as it really takes a lot of the hassle out of maintaining a job board by making things a lot more automated.

Import: ​On this last tab, you can choose to import job listings posted on CareerBuilder and Indeed on a specific keyword to a specific category on your site.

For instance, you could import all job listings from Indeed for freelance copywriting jobs posted by US employers within the last 30 days to your writing category.

Maintaining Your Job Board

Once you’ve gone through all the settings and configuration options available in the WordPress Job Board plugin, you should have your job board looking just as it should and ready to go.
The menu item we discussed earlier, “Job Board”, deals mainly with the maintenance options for the plugin.

This is where you, as the administrator, can add, edit, or delete new job postings, online applications, registered employers, and job candidates.

You will also be able to view your payment history, the memberships employers have currently signed up for, and the e-mail alerts that have been sent.

Creating a New Job Listing

There are two different ways that employers will be able to create new job listings. The first way is to do it through the WordPress back end, and the second is to do it via the front end.

If employers do it through the back end, they will do it the WYSIWYG WordPress post editor that all of you ought to be ​very ​familiar with.

They will need to provide all the information that you required when you configured the Custom fields options in the settings page.

On the front end, the UI is typically much nicer (depending on the styling of the theme you have — it’s recommended that you use the free​ ​WordPress Job Board Theme alongside this plugin).

However, the change in UI won’t affect the process, which is still the same. Employers will still have to enter in all the information that you require.​​​

Other WordPress Job Board Features

The WordPress Job Board plugin comes bundled in with an awful lot of cool features that will help you to extend the functionality and capabilities of your job board.

First off, the plugin has over 15 shortcodes in the system that help you to insert content related to your job board into your posts and pages. There are also 5+ widgets you can tack on to your navigational menus to allow front end visitors to easily browse your job board.

You also get a ton of documentation and first-class support. A built-in templating engine allows you to customize your site’s look on the go.

WPJB is also built with Schema.org markups, which help to allow search engines to decipher your content and interpret it correctly as a job posting, increasing your relevancy in the results pages.

Finally, the plugin is also compatible with WordPress multisite and is translation-ready for those of you who’d prefer to see the UI in your native language.

Pricing & Fees

WP Job Board has a very simple pricing structure. You have two options.

The first will set you back $97; you’ll be able to use the plugin on a single site, get a full year of updates & support, and get the $79 value job board theme free of cost.

The second option is a little more expensive at $199, but you get everything in the $97 plan plus the following: the license to use the plugin on an unlimited number of sites, the ability to modify the source code (extra documentation included), as well as special access to beta releases before they’re available to the public.

It certainly isn’t dirt-cheap, but it is excellent value for money, particularly when you consider it gives you potential to create a highly profitable website that will pay for itself many ​times over.

Wrapping Up

If you’re setting out to build a job board, you can’t go wrong with WP Job Board. It has all the features, functions, and integrations you could ever need, all at a reasonable price.

The post How to Create a Fully Functional Job Board Site with WP Job Board appeared first on Bloggermint.